MERRY 25

It sounded like a question, but he didn’t seem truly curious, and Liam didn’t look like he had any intention of answering either. To an outsider, we might have looked like two men engaged in a psychological tug-of-war over me. In reality, it was just a friend who found me annoying and a stalker who kept pushing me away. Still, since I was the one connecting them, I stepped in to mediate.

“Aren’t you leaving? You’ll be busy if you want to get home, read your books, and pack.”

Liam said, “Right, I should,” but then walked back a few steps to stand in front of me.

“See you when I get back. My surprisingly decent friend.”

His sudden affection felt awkward, so I waved my hand as if shooing away a fly. Liam gave Ethan a quick scan and walked off. Before he was even out of sight, a message arrived.

Liam Dalton 

Your manager seems to still be misunderstanding the relationship between us. Fix it.

There’s nothing to misunderstand. Even if he does, he doesn’t even care. Trying to explain myself would just make me look pathetic.

Liam Dalton 

Even after I get back from LA, you’re banned from my place without the manager’s permission.

Faced with this absurd demand, I asked why.

Liam Dalton 

I don’t want to get caught up in annoying business.

He isn’t your stalker, is he?

He is. A persistent one, at that. He looks normal, but he’s a surprisingly weird man.

See you when you get back. I’ll be camping out in front of your house.

Instead of telling the truth, I replied with a half-threat and toyed with the car keys in my pocket. I stood up without a word and walked past Ethan, pretending not to see him. I wondered if his eyes were still following me, if he’d started following me, or if he was right behind me, but I didn’t look back.

If I get in the car quickly and clear the alley, can I lose him? I hurried my pace, weighing the possibilities, before returning to my original speed. It wasn’t a matter of whether I could or couldn’t.

Are you really going to shake him off? If that’s what you want, there’s an easier way. Call the police.

A cyst of rationality bulging in one corner of my brain spoke to me. The voice screaming for me to take out my phone immediately soon mocked me.

You can’t even tell Liam, so you think you can do that? Is it that you can’t, or you won’t?

I adjusted my sunglasses for no reason and went to my car. I filled the interior with jazz to drown out the voice gnawing at my nerves and drove off.

I drove in the opposite direction of my house. My destination was a building on the border of the Upper East Side and East Harlem. A party hosted by the racer was being held there, in a space that had been used as a club until recently.

As I slowed down, confused by the directions, a car pulled up right behind mine. It had to be the black sedan, so I tried not to acknowledge it, but I simply couldn’t. I watched through the rearview mirror as the car dangerously closed the gap and then pulled away.

“What is wrong with his driving?”

I grumbled and gripped the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Ethan’s reckless driving was effective at suppressing the cyst of rationality trying to crawl out through the jazz music. The side effect was that my heart was racing from the shock.

“Is he drunk? I should report him for something else.”

He stayed quiet for a while in the heavy traffic zones, but the bizarre behavior started again once we hit a relatively clear road. Ethan, closing the distance as if he were ready to cause a fender bender, called me.

“Learn how to drive. You’re going to cause an accident.”

My resolve not to speak to him crumbled just like that. I picked up and poured out my complaints, but he didn’t even pretend to listen.

— Are you going to that racer’s party? Where is it? Harlem?

“That’s not what’s important right now… Wait, are you seriously driving like a maniac because of that?”

— I’m not a maniac.

“You look like one to me! And I have no obligation to tell you my schedule.”

— I’m not trying to argue about that. Give me the address.

the voice over the phone felt just as blunt as when he spoke to Liam. The atmosphere of pressuring me to speak was thick with coercion, which irritated my already defensive mood.

“No.”

— Somerset.

“Do I look like the kind of idiot who reports his travel plans to a stalker? Just leave me alone. I’ve been giving you hints that I want to ignore you. I didn’t even acknowledge you.”

Raising my voice was useless. Ethan was relentless.

— I don’t want you to get hurt.

“What, are you going to ram my car if I don’t answer?”

— So that’s an option. Thanks for the tip.

His car seemed to slow down, and then, once there was a bit of distance between us, it began to accelerate fiercely toward me.

“You crazy bastard!”

Shouting curses didn’t stop him, and I eventually blurted out the address of the party.

— Got it.

Ethan’s car swerved and sped past me just before a collision.

“You… you…”

— I didn’t really intend to hit you.

“Too late. You think I’d believe that?”

If I’d pissed myself, I would have taken off my wet underwear and thrown it at you, you son of a bitch.

∞ ∞ ∞

The opening sentence of the author Alex Howard’s still-unselling book, <Humanity>, is as follows.

Humans must beware of the fallacy that all humans are humane.

At this point, no one could deny that the human I needed to beware of most was Ethan Reed. Not even Ethan Reed himself.

I used to know a time when he was humane. However, that thought was starting to crack and waver. Was it not that he had changed, but that I had misjudged him in the past?

Normal humans don’t attempt to ram someone else’s car just to get the answer they want. No matter how you looked at it, it was insane.

The insane Ethan Reed.

“Crazy bastard.”

I didn’t just think it; I let the harsh expression slip out loud. There was no one to hear me but myself. Because the surroundings were so loud, most mutterings were buried anyway.

Electronic beats packed with rhythm thundered frantically, and people chattered away. Suffering through the ear-splitting noise, I looked around. Outside, the sun hadn’t set yet, but inside, neon lights were blooming everywhere in the early darkness.

Since I had brought my car and wasn’t feeling the alcohol, I stood at the bar holding a non-alcoholic drink. A man smelling of dry wood naturally wrapped his arm around my waist. Searching through my hazy memory, his was a face I had seen at a luxury brand event.

“Hey. Having a good time?”

As he struck up a friendly conversation, I maintained a moderately social attitude.

“It’s alright.”

“Feels like it’s been a while since I’ve seen you at one of these. You must be busy with work.”

The man, showing off his nipple piercings inside a half-unbuttoned shirt, didn’t hide his purpose for talking to me. Sex. He wanted me to hold him tonight. The man was good-looking enough to be confident in his approach.

“I don’t know about busy, but I have been getting lazy lately.”

I accepted his words casually, shaking my drink bottle.

“Unfortunately, I plan on being fully lazy today too.”

“How about being lazy together?”

“That would be moving toward being debauched.”

“Debauchery is good too.”

The man winked and placed a hand on my forearm. The way he felt up my muscles was incredibly blatant. As if he were determined to seduce me, he pulled something out of his pocket. He said it was a drug that makes you feel good. He claimed it wasn’t illegal, but I wondered if that was true.

Instead of looking uncomfortable, I rejected him with a relaxed attitude. If I looked like a rookie who got anxious at the sight of drugs, the man would likely cling even more stubbornly and drone on with some sophistry about the pills. People who did drugs were usually bad news.

I put some distance between myself and the man, then found the racer who was hosting the party and informed him about the drugs. Since he was a party animal but loathed anything illegal, he would take care of it.

I’d had an unpleasant encounter and my mood wasn’t great, so I moved to a quiet bar table away from the stage, intending to leave soon. But as soon as I set my drink down, someone occupied the spot next to me.

“Good to see you. I didn’t expect to run into you here.”

It wasn’t rare for a stranger to act friendly, but this person was exceptionally forward. The attractive man showed a hint of disappointment at my lukewarm reaction. The way he pouted his lips before pulling them back was a bit forced.

“You forgot me. That hurts a little.”

“Have we met?”